Getting closer: One of Russia’s quietest submarines and three warships track our Florida coast

In another example of Joe Biden’s mismanagement of U.S. foreign policy, the Russians have decided to case our coast, sending their quitest submarine along with three warships, not to attack us or anything, but to get a message across: that they’re here and they can get close to us and our rockets any time they like. The Navy is watching them.

According to Florida Today:

Three Russian Navy ships and a nuclear-powered submarine seem to be passing the Florida coast Tuesday, June 11, on the way to Cuba for a military exercise, according to open-source intelligence analysts on social media. A tweet on X, formerly known as Twitter, said that the US Coast Guard Cutter Stone may be shadowing the Russian flotilla off the east coast of Florida abeam of Cape Canaveral.

On Wednesday, June 5, a U.S. official told the media that Russia planned to conduct naval exercises with combat vessels in the Caribbean region. The United States did not see the expected arrival of the flotilla to the Western Hemisphere to be threatening, but the official told Reuters the U.S. Navy will monitor the exercises. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details that had not been made public yet.

Cuba said in a release last week the ships carried no nuclear weapons and did not represent a threat.

Sure, they say it was just military exercises with Cuba. And yes, they have done this before — as far back as the moonshot in the 1960s. My father worked for the space program back then in Florida and said they were aware of Russian vessels spying on them at the time.

In recent years, they’ve been doing it more often. According to World Politics Review:

Prior to the war in Ukraine, the current visit would have gotten a small amount of media attention, some of it hyperbolic, but would still have been largely seen as no big deal. Russia made visits to the Caribbean an almost annual ritual in the 2010s, with at least six similar exercises and several smaller trips throughout that decade. In 2015, 2017 and 2019, the Viktor Leonov spy ship, capable of intercepting radio communications, lingered in international waters off the U.S. coast and also visited Cuba. In 2019, the U.S. military warned the ship that it was operating in an unsafe manner that could affect nearby vessels. Several times, including in 2019, the Admiral Gorshkov visited Cuba another ports of call in the Caribbean.

They don’t seem to think it’s so “hyperbolic” this time.

Based on this tweet, it appears that the Russians went out of their way to pay us a visit, taking a detour to Florida, adding thousands of miles to their voyage and raising its costs.

US Coast Guard Cutter Stone may be shadowing the Russian Flotilla which may be off the east coast of Florida abeam of Cape Canaveral. https://t.co/23Crv7XuEc

— TheIntelFrog (@TheIntelFrog) June 10, 2024

Even with allowances for topographical issues that affect shipping, it’s obvious they weren’t just passing through by geographical happenstance on the way to their military exercises with Cuba. If they had wanted to just go to Cuba as they claimed, that line would have gone straight down or down more sharply. They didn’t need to pass Florida’s coast to get there.

The Eurasian Times, and others, point out that this overly familiar visit by the Russians to Florida’s coast coincides with Biden’s approval of weaponry for Ukraine that can strike inside Russia, which was a dramatic shift.

But, the timing of the port call right under the US nose comes as the Ukraine-Russia war is escalating, with NATO countries increasing their stakes in the war. Also, Cuba and the US being just 145 kilometers apart from their closest point doesn’t help the situation.

And this time, the Russians wheeled out their fanciest hardware:

But, the main part of the flotilla is one of the most modern nuclear submarines of Russia – Kazan. Cuba has assured that the submarine will not be carrying any nuclear weapons and poses no regional threat.

The Yasen-class are a series of nuclear-powered cruise missile submarines designed by the Malakhit Engineering Bureau and built at the Sevmash Shipyard (JSC PO/Joint Stock Company Sevmash), part of the USC (United Shipbuilding Corporation). The Kazan is capable of launching a range of anti-ship and land attack missiles. It is one of the quietest submarines in the Russian underwater fleet.

Sound like a nice submarine to be casing the Florida coast?

Obviously, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, is sending us a message. If we deliver weapons to Ukraine to expand its war onto Russian soil, we should not be surprised to see the Russians casing our coast.

Biden’s decision to do this was puzzling, given that the Russians were quite likely to retaliate. Did no one consider that when the decision was made to enrage the Russians? Did no one expect that they might think up something like this, just as we are escalating military involvement in many places? Now the Russians have shown us how they can retaliate — by taking out a Florida city or two — with that quiet and hard to track submarine and the next time they send that submarine, it may not be accompanied by the easy-to-surveil warships.

Eurasia News points out that the voyage will probably give U.S. analysts a chance to study the military weaponry, which may be true, but could be a little pollyannaish, too.

What the Russians want to do is menace us, at a time when our military materiel is deblitated by its involvement in Ukraine and wokester rot is sapping military morale. It comes as the U.S. military has too many things going on already.

It seems to be getting attention that the Russians are a bit more serious with this activity than in the past, and that is not good news for the U.S., which could have avoided this whole thing by staying at arm’s distance from Ukraine and keeping that war from expanding. Now the Navy is scrambling to keep track of what they are up to as they get close.

Russia is sending a predictable message, and Joe Biden either knew it and didn’t care, or didn’t know it and got surprised. Either way is not a good look.

Image: U.S. National Archives, via Picryl // no known copyright restrictions